God Mode
"God Mode" is the twenty-second episode of season 2, and overall the forty-fifth produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on May 9, 2013 Synopsis Reese and Finch team up with a group of allies in a race to save the Machine from Root and the mysterious organization Decima, who have both re-emerged with dangerous agendas. As Finch's allies faces off against enemies old and new, the nature of Finch's relationship with former partner Nathan Ingram is revealed along with his original motivation for wanting to save The Machine’s irrelevant numbers. Meanwhile, in her mission to bring Cal Beecher's murderer to justice, Detective Carter finds herself up against the criminal organization known as HR. The episode begins with The Machine reviewing the footage of last week's episode It replays Finch splicing the telephone circuits, so that John can have full administrative access as well as Root. The Machine then relays "Clock Positions" to John as to where to fire his gun. The Machine is assessing potential threats to John and saving him in the process (Something mentioned about the Machine saving Finch's life in while he was in Atlantic City doing a test run. The Machine does the same with Root. Both parties race to find the Machine, however John is slowed down as the Machine wants John to rescue people from the irrelevant list. Root finds Lawrence Szilard, the man who recruited Daniel Aquino. He was the Project Manager for Northern Lights, responsible for building the space to house the Machine, and assembling it together. He also took a look at the code, and had much the same feeling as Root, that the Machine should be allowed some freedom. He gets shot by a sniper, who also takes a couple of shots at Root. Root finds that the Machine has moved itself to prevent tampering by Decima. She blames Harold and as she is going to shoot him, but Samantha Shaw shoots Root and saves Harold. Just then the government men led by Special Counsel and Hersh walk in holding guns. Finch explains that The Machine moved itself, as an act of self-preservation. Finch does not know if the Machine will continue to call both the Government and himself with new numbers or not, believing it will now decide for itself. It has the freedom that Root wanted it to have. Special Counsel tries to get Finch to help find the Machine, or to build a new one, offering carte blanche authority on the matter, but Finch refuses saying that they made false promises to his friend Nathan too, and killed him in the process. Special Counsel allows them to leave. After they go, an unknown woman calls Special Counsel's phone. She asks to talk to Hersh. She then tells Hersh to "Seal the room" to which he says "Yes Ma'am" and shoots everyone including Special Counsel, who does not attempt to escape. Later, Reese and Finch are seen talking about the current status of the Machine. Finch states that he doesn't know what the Machine will do next, and that continued numbers delivery is uncertain. He also states that he feels responsible for the events that transpired, especially the ones in Reese's life, because of his attempt to insert the new code in the Machine. Reese dismisses it saying: "My life changed when I kept my mouth shut in an airport terminal seven years ago. You lost a friend, you did what you had to do". Then, a payphone starts ringing, indicating that the Machine will still send them the irrelevant numbers. Meanwhile, Hersh is seen talking with a woman in a black town car, reporting what transpired. He says that Research made contact and there is a new number. The woman tells him to get a team together and deal with the problem meaning that he is reffering to a Relevant number. For the first time Hersh is depicted with a yellow square, indicating that he knows about the Machine, which is also the case of the woman. The identity of the woman remains unknown, but it is suggested, that she is the mysterious "Control". (The document header states "Memorandum for Control - Department recruitment status 2012-2013".) The Machine also calls Root, and asks again, in disjointed voices, "Can You Hear Me?" During this same time frame Detective Carter is being interviewed by the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) investigators about the shooting of a suspect who was armed when Carter shot him, but whose gun disappeared, presumably taken away by a uniformed officer in the employ of HR. HR and Peter Yogorov attempt to kill Carl Elias, but the attempt is stopped by a masked Detective Carter, who kills Yogorov and frees Elias. Episode Notes *In some types of gaming, God Mode is a set of rules (known as a mechanic) that make a character god-like or invincible. *Lawrence Szilard may have been named for Austro-Hungarian nuclear physicist Leó Szilárd, who was a contemporary of Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller. Szilárd did early foundation research on the nuclear chain reaction, contributing to the development of the first atomic bomb. Leó Szilárd spent his later life advocating for international arms control, and opposing the militarization of atomic energy use. *In this episode, the three potential sites were mentioned for the location of the machine: 1) Yucca Mountain, Nevada (Long-term storage of radioactive waste) 2) Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Washington (Manufactured plutonium used in the early research) and 3 Comanche Peak, Texas (Nuclear Power Plant) *By the end of the episode, four entities have an interest in the Machine: 1) Finch, Reese and their new-found ally Shaw; 2) Special Counsel and the Project; 3) Root and; 4) Greer and Decima Technologies. *Cliffhanger: Root loses administrative access to the Machine as she arrived at the door behind which The Machine was installed at the Hanford facility. The next day, once she is in a mental hospital, she appears to receive a call from the Machine as the episode ends, but it is not clear what that call signifies. Equally unclear is whether the call to which Hersh refers when briefing the unknown woman is the same call Finch and Reese receive. Acronyms and Vocabulary * NLP (Natural Language Processing): The capacity of a computer to understand spoken or other forms of natural human language, that is, a computer's ability to understand spoken or written input. In this application, it refers to the Machine's ability to understand input such as the text imbedded in the blue screen codes or Finch's spoken commands. * HMT (Hybrid Machine Translation): The system by which a computer can translate one natural language (i.e. English) to another (i.e. Spanish) using a combination of machine translation paradigms. In the scene pictured, the Machine analyzes the shooters' Russian dialogue (NLP) and translates it into English for us (HMT). * Nuclear Reprocessing: Extraction of residual uranium and plutonium from spent fuel rods, used in nuclear power plants, in order for it to be reused for other purposes. Production Notes Bloopers and Continuity Errors *When Finch follows Nathan to the ferry, he isn't carrying a bag of any kind, nor is he seen to be carrying a book. When Grace looks at the personal effects recovered from the scene of the terrorist attack, however, she finds the book into which Finch placed her engagement ring when he proposed to her. *When Lawrence Szilard's airplane ticket falls out of his bag, Shaw says that the airport in Portland is the closest airport the the Hanford site, when in fact the airport in Seattle is almost an hour closer. *When Shaw and Reese drive off the highway and fall, they fall a significant distance, likely over twenty feet. The car suffers some damage, yet Reese and Shaw step out unscathed. This is incredibly unlikely, as is the fact that no police pursued them further after they drove off of the highway. *When Reese and Shaw steal the helicopter, they say that they need it to get to the nuclear facility in Washington. While the facility is almost 3,000 miles away, most helicopters can travel no further than 750 miles without refueling. If Reese and Shaw did in fact fly by helicopter, the trip would have taken significantly longer than it took Root and Finch, yet both parties arrived at the same time. Dramatic Elements *When Finch comes into view with crutches stating "Did you know? at the beginning of the episode, the narrative is constructed using in medias res, (medias: middle), a non-linear storytelling technique where the narrative starts in the middle of events and uses flashbacks to bring the reader up to the point of current. * This episode incorporated the theme stoic acceptance of death. This not only be seen in the case of Elias, but also with Special Counsel. * The statement Root made to Finch "I can see for the first time,and you're blind." has two meanings. Literally, Harold has no glasses. Figuratively, Harold does not have access to The Machine. Trivia *The Machine was able to move itself to a new undisclosed location in a five-week time span, one node at a time without going off-line by assuming Special Counsel's identity. *The persons affiliated with the Northern Lights project, who died under mysterious circumstances, the incident is reminiscent of the tale of the pyramid builders who were buried alive after they completed construction of the pharaoh's tombs. *The combination to the wall safe in The Library is 02-24-05 which is the first day The Machine went online and the date that Harold Finch explained to Nathan Ingram how The Machine works. *Producers Greg Plageman and Jonathan Nolan along with episode director Richard J. Lewis, make a cameo as orderlies and patient respectively when Root walks down the hallway in the asylum. *Both the first episode of the second season and the finale start with a flashback where Harold talks directly to the Machine. *Root was introduced as a psychiatrist in Firewall, under the alias Caroline Turing. In God Mode, we can see the irony of her being incarcerated within a psychatric facility. Promo Sneek Peaks References Category:Season 2 Category:Episodes